The present invention relates generally to telephone call recording, and more particularly to call recording in a voice over internet protocol network.
One or more parties to a telephone call often desire to record all, or a portion, of the call. One simple technique for such recording is for one of the parties to the call to record the conversation at a recording device located at the customer premises. However, there are certain problems with this technique. First, there are privacy considerations that must be taken into account prior to one party to a call unilaterally recording the conversation. In many instances, it is desirable and/or required to have all parties to a call consent to recording before recording commences. As such, it is undesirable to record without verifiable proof of consent from all parties. Another problem with unilateral recording is that the recording is not secure, and may be tampered with by the recording party. Thus, a recording made using equipment at a customer premises may not be reliable as an accurate documentation of the actual conversation between the parties.
Attempts have been made at solving some of these problems. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,529,602 discloses in-network call recording at a public switched telephone network (PSTN) node. That system utilizes a network node within a circuit switched telephone network in order to provide a secure location for stored recorded conversations. That system also provides for requesting recording permission from the call participants. The system described in the aforementioned '602 patent, however, is disadvantageous in that the parties to the call are connected to the recording node via two separate telephone connections. Thus, the parties must each establish a separate connection with the node, and then the node bridges the separate connections together in order connect the parties and record the conversation. One problem with this system is that the parties must know before the call is initiated that they want the call to be recorded. Such a system cannot be used to record a call if the participants decide to record the call after a normal telephone call is setup.
While the PSTN has been in existence for many years, more recently, data packet networks, such as local area networks (LAN) and wide area networks (WAN) have become more prevalent. These data networks operate in accordance with the internet protocol (IP) and such networks are referred to as IP networks. The popularity of IP networks has created an interest in providing voice and related services over IP networks. The provisioning of voice and related services over an IP network is referred to as voice over IP (VoIP).
Conventional PSTN voice services dedicate a circuit connection between a calling and called party. IP networks, on the other hand, are shared networks in which the network resources are shared between users. The notion of a connection in a data packet network is very different from the notion of a connection in a circuit network. In a circuit network, the connection is a dedicated circuit which is used only by the calling and called parties and is used for the duration of the call. In a data network, the connection between two parties is not dedicated, and traffic between the parties is transmitted via the data packet network along with the data packets of other users. There is no dedicated path between the parties, and data packets may be transmitted between the parties via different paths, depending upon network traffic.